Hard Drive Share Problem (solved)

Hey, I'm running a computer that has a shared hard drive over our network.

The hard drive shares fine and everyone can see it.

But when I to to do something that lasts a short while (like copying over files), the computer hosting the hard drive disappears off the network, and I have to restart the system.

Does anyone have any idea why this is happening?

P.S. I'm running an FTP server that also uses this drive, is there some sort of clash maybe?

FTP really shouldn't clash. How many drives are in that computer? Does it have a static IP address? Does the network have a domain.local or is it a workgroup?

It has 2 drives, the shared one is the secondary drive, It has a local static IP address. and it's a normal windows share, so I don't know if it's domain.local or workgroup.

You would know if your network had a domain login, so I'll assume that it's a workgroup or should be a workgroup. If you go to the system properties of each machine, they all should have the same workgroup, under the computer name tag. That would be the first thing I would check.

You also might want to look for errors in the event viewer. Let me ask a few more questions. How many PCs are accessing the shares? Don't forget about the 10 connection limit for non server software, such as XP. What is the PC running?

The PC is running Windows 7 Home Premium, there are a maximum of 2 systems that access the drive, even though I have the amount of max connections set to 20.

All computers accessing the system are set to the default workgroup "WORKGROUP".

I will attempt to check for errors in event viewer now.

P.S. In case I forgot, when the problem occurs, the host system completely disconnects from the network.

UPDATE - I have isolated the error in the event viewer, and found this error concerning my In-built LAN Adaptor:

"The description for Event ID 194 from source ATCL001 cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer."

Whatever the problem is, it seems to be disabling the LAN adaptor when it reaches a certain criteria.

Is that an onboard NIC? Is there a PCI slot to install a network card?

If not, Radio Shack has a USB to Cat5 adapter made by Trendnet. TU2-ET100. It's under $30.

Well I live in England >.>
But after seeing the hardware failure error I assumed a driver failure, and it seems I was right on the money.

After a driver uninstall and update it's working good as gold.
Thanks for your help.

I'm glad to hear it.